Weekly Standard unmasks not such a subtle bigotry on the part of the Boston Globe:
Boston Globe photo
The "M" Word
The Boston Globe makes an issue of Mitt Romney's religion.
by Dean Barnett
03/07/2005 12:30:00 PMLAST THURSDAY the Boston Globe published an editorial regarding Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. It was, not surprisingly, far from complimentary: Romney is a conservative Republican and the Globe's opinion pages, are, in the words of their own ombudsperson Christine Chinlund, "liberal leaning." The editorial took issue with Romney's stance against gay marriage. In its course, the editorial offered this seeming non-sequitur (a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from anything previously said, JRT) regarding Romney's position: "It is the kind of thinking that had some people attacking Romney on the basis of his religion (Romney is a Mormon) in his 1994 Senate bid--something this page deplored."
For Bay Staters with long memories, the Globe's assertion that it had deplored the rampant Mormon baiting of the 1994 campaign was jarring and audaciously at odds with the facts.
In the course of covering this story, the Globe staffers and the editors supervising them felt it necessary to provide
the paper's readership with some background on the Mormon faith. To this end the Globe quoted prominent Boston gay activist Vin McCarthy, who offered the following assessment of Romney's religion: "I have always found it a delicious irony that a church founded on polygamy is so sanctimonious about fornication and homosexuality." This quote was followed by Phillips and Lehigh's observation that "Until the early 1890s, Mormon Church members practiced polygamy."
And that was that. At no point in the article did the Globe quote any experts on Mormonism to confirm whether the religion was indeed "founded on polygamy." (It was not.) Nor did the Globe reporters take issue with McCarthy's assertion; indeed, they merely amplified it. For a paper that now professes to have "deplored" the attacks on Romney's religion, this was bizarre conduct indeed.
THE NON-SEQUITUR in last week's editorial was sufficiently brazen and that it raised a lot of eyebrows amongst Massachusetts political observers. Some cynical analysts suggested that it constituted a threat of sorts: If Romney continued to take the national conservative lead on such hot button issues as gay marriage and embryonic cloning for stem cell research purposes, the Globe would not be above returning his religion to the forefront of the political discussion.
If the editorial was indeed a threat, the Globe made good on it this Sunday, with a lengthy, front-page profile of Governor Romney's relationship with his late father, former Michigan governor and failed presidential candidate George Romney. Curiously, even though the article wasn't on religion, it mentioned the term "Mormon" seven times (eight if you count the caption to the accompanying photo that also appeared on the Globe's front page). [link]
Mitt Romney with a Jewish supporter during the campaign of 2002.
"M" is for Mormon, "B" in "Boston Globe" is for bigots.
posted by: jrtelegraph
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